Readers react: Why Tarzan is the real-life hero that young boys need

In praise of real-life human heroes

There is a great message in Amy Kaufman’s interview with Alexander Skarsgard [“The New King of the Jungle,” July 3] in which he says his hero is Tarzan, not some animated figure shooting spiderwebs from fingers. I think boys need real-life heroes instead of Ninja turtles and special effects. Years ago, my older brother and I went to a Steve Reeves movie. I told my brother I wanted to grow up to be a man with muscles like that. It was an impossible challenge as I was in crutches and leg braces from polio. But my brother worked with me. Even after he died, I kept on with my gym training. Fast forward to the Beverly Garland Hotel, and Reeves and his wife were signing autographs. As I approached, he said, “Great guns, man! You work out?” I was too overcome to tell him that he was a disabled 10-year-old boy’s role model. How many kids get inspired that way by a turtle?

Kurt Sipolski

Palm Desert

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After seeing the tantalizing TV ads for the new “Tarzan” movie, I was anxious to see it. Then on opening day, before I went to an early screening, I read Kenneth Turan’s negative review [“Film Can’t Swing It,” July 1] and almost stayed home. At the end of this visually stunning and truly entertaining movie, while most of the audience was applauding, I wanted to shout out, “Take that, Kenny boy.”

Alan Segal

San Diego

End of ‘Prairie Home Companion’ era

Regarding: “Garrison Keillor Bids Farewell” [July 4]: Somewhere on the National Mall, beside Lincoln, Jefferson, etc., a memorial to Garrison Keillor would be appropriate. His unique physicality needs no embellishment when the sculpture’s chisel carves Keillor’s hulking likeness into marble. He is a national treasure, to be preserved.

Jerry Collamer

San Clemente

A great TV movie passed by

Regarding: “Spielberg From First to Worst” by Marc Bernardin [July 3]. What about “Duel,” with Dennis Weaver? This ’70s low-budget, unusual nail-bitter shot on lonesome back roads with just a few odd characters kept us on the edge of our couches, and we have never forgotten it. This is a much deeper film than the surface plot, featuring a plodding salesman with an off-screen nagging wife who is just trying to make a living and finds himself the target of a maniacal truck driver with a monstrous rig. This classic surely deserves mention along with the others.

Annette Halpern

Ventura

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“Duel” was not even mentioned. The film is a classic thriller with an outstanding suspenseful effect and performance by Weaver. It originally was a TV movie, but later released to theaters. It deserves an honorable mention at the least.

Chris Kozak

Granada Hills

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I was eager to see where “Duel” would place, as it’s one of my favorites, and it wasn’t even listed. It should have been in the top 10.

Lyn Kraatz

Long Beach

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I disagree with Bernardin’s pick of “1941” as one of Spielberg’s worst films. “1941” had a fresh premise, a wonderful cast and some of the most memorable scenes in movie comedy history.

Errol McCarthy

Long Beach

Too little progress, too late

Regarding: Academy Invitees: Face of Change” [July 2]. The story’s lead: “The last week has been a watershed one for race and Hollywood.” Watershed? The fact that the film academy has belatedly tried to rectify the problem of its largely white/male membership is certainly a step in the right direction, but it in no way has the import of the burning race issues that appear in the first section of this newspaper on a much too frequent basis.

Jon Schwartz

Santa Monica

Appreciation of a film classic

Thank you for Kevin Crust’s highly informative piece on the production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” [“A Production as Nervy as the Material,” July 3]. This is the most densely textured movie I’ve ever seen. And Mike Nichols did a masterful job bringing it to film.

Pat Todd

Sherwood Forest

A new release from an old favorite

Thanks for the heads-up on Van Morrison’s forthcoming release. [“A Sequel to 1973 From Van Morrison,” July 3]. He’s always been my favorite musician, and his music has been with me through good times and bad.

Nancy Roeger

Carlsbad

Too late for Stalin

Regarding: “Foiling North Korea’s Best-face Farce” [July 6] Vitaly Mansky’s birth year is given as 1963 but the article also refers to “his childhood under Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin. Stalin died in 1953. I believe Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev was still the country’s leader in 1963.

Ron Williams

Culer City

Type of futility

Regarding “The Artistic Type” [July 6]. Tim Youd sits in a Hollywood Boulevard storefront window, “squashing the book,” as he puts it: retyping other people’s novels onto a single page. “It’s a performance and a learning experience,” asserts the Calendar. Perhaps, but is it art? When Mr Youd completes one of his exercises, he’s produced nothing but a block of black ink on a piece of paper. Is there a point? Comparisons are odious, but I can’t help wondering if The Times ever gave this kind of front page exposure to Harlan Ellison on any of the many occasions when he sat at his typewriter in a store front window actually creating something, a story which could be published, read and enjoyed.

Preston Neal Jones

Hollywood